Utilizing Smart Thinking to Improve Writing Scores

As a part of an online early childhood education course I will require students to turn their first paper into Smart Thinking before submitting their final paper. The paper that is submitted for a grade must also include the draft and notes from Smart Thinking in order to receive credit for the paper. This is the first of three papers that students will write for the semester. I am interested in tracking:

scores of each of the three papers: all will be graded using a rubric; is the Smart Thinking paper a higher score

students who choose to use Smart Thinking for the two papers that do not require that step

Depending on the results I may alter instructions to require the Smart Thinking step for all papers in future semesters.